


The Mission

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [35]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Beyond the Wall - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Plans, Strategy, Wights, talk of marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 21:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20396245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: "Absolutely not," Jon said, but Arya had already swung up onto her horse.





	The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Next part :)

“Absolutely not,” Jon said, but Arya had already swung up onto her horse.

“She beat three of my best men with that tiny sword and dagger of hers,” Edd Tollett told him apologetically, “and her idea is not a bad one.”

“You should have come to me first,” Jon argued, words directed at both of them.

“He’s Lord Commander here,” Arya pointed out. “He’s the one who can approve a plan like this.”

“She’s right, Jon,” Edd agreed. “When it comes to battle, you’ll take the head if that queen of yours isn’t here, but until then I hold command. Command _you _gave me, if you remember. I may not have asked for it, but I am not going to stand down.” Jon opened his mouth, clearly furious, and Edd went on. “Your sister has experience in war, perhaps more than most of us, and a perspective _none _of us have.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Jon said stubbornly.

“It’s not as though I’m going alone.” Arya glanced back at the rangers waiting by the tunnel expectantly and then at Gendry a few feet away. “We’ll be back by dark.”

In a move that made her blood boil, Jon looked over her shoulder at Gendry. “You allowed her to convince you of this?”

Before she could say anything, Gendry was speaking behind her. “With all due respect, Your Grace,” and she was definitely not imagining the emphasis on that title, “I do not _allow _Arya to do anything, nor her me. She asked me what I thought, and then we went to the Lord Commander _together_. He wanted to see us _both_ spar against some of the other men. We proved ourselves. _She _proved herself, probably for the dozenth time since we met again in Riverrun. Not that she needs to.” Arya did her best to keep her face from expressing the warmth rising in her belly from the words, but Gendry was still talking. “Arya can take care of herself, she did for a long, long time. I know you regret as much as I do that you weren’t there to protect her, but she didn’t need us.” Between their horses, Nymeria let out a high whine of evident distress and bumped her nose against Arya’s knee. Arya bit her tongue against her protest because it would do nothing to convince Jon of her case right now, but she made a mental note to correct Gendry later.

When the following silence made it clear that Gendry was finished speaking, Jon said, “I’m coming with you.”

Edd stepped in once more. “I need you here to go over strategy. If this is for naught, then we’ll need another way to get to the Night King. These used to be your brothers, Jon,” he added when Jon opened his mouth again. “Trust them to look after your sister. Trust _her _to know what she’s doing. They need to get going if they want to be back before sundown.”

Arya felt a brief flash of guilt at Jon’s defeated expression, but Edd was right; they needed to leave, and there wasn’t time for Jon to prepare a horse. Even so, she thought a little fondly, he got the last word. “Take Ghost,” he said quietly. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She flipped the dragonglass dagger in her hand in a salute, then followed the rangers through the Wall’s tunnel.

**

It took two hours of riding to find a Wight, and as Arya had expected, it wasn’t alone.

They were milling around aimlessly, rather like ants when someone stepped on their mound. Arya dismounted her horse, landing silently in the snow, so she could creep a little closer. Gendry and two of the rangers followed until they were a mere four yards away, hidden by a cluster of trees.

She knew they were the dead risen, but she had never seen a body that was more than a few days old before this. A few of the Wights were more bone than anything else, without even glowing eyes staring from their skulls, so fragile looking that she couldn’t begin to comprehend how they could even stand, let alone fight and kill able-bodied men. But she knew about Hardhome and what they had done to the Wildlings there, first from Jon and then in detail from Tormund on the road to Riverrun. For all she knew, one of the Wights here could be from that day.

“I need that one,” Arya murmured, gesturing to the one on the outskirts of the group. It had been a young woman once, she thought, despite most of its hair missing from its scalp. Its face was intact, the skin thinly stretched across its skull and its eyes glowing bright blue. The rest of its body would likely be similar underneath its tattered furs. She made herself ignore the thought that it couldn’t be more than a week dead, preserved as it was compared to the others, and pointedly refused to allow herself to wonder who it might have been before. “Do _not_ harm it, at least not with dragonglass or Valerian steel. If this works, I need it to be in one piece.”

“It won’t be easy,” the ranger named Ronald whispered. A southern name, Arya had noted, but he seemed comfortable enough despite the wicked cold and falling snow. “The less time that’s passed since their death, the stronger they are.”

“It has to be he—it has to be that one.” Arya hoped they hadn’t heard what she almost said.

There were no further objections.

They each selected a target, with Arya and Ronald focusing on the Wight they wanted for capture, and sprung into action. Two of them went down easily enough, being little more than skeleton and having had their backs turned, but the other six fought hard, and they were _loud. _Arya winced as an inhuman shriek grated against her ears even as she used Needle to knock the rusted sword out of their Wight’s hand, rapping the flat of the blade against its wrist. It rushed her, hands reaching out to clasp around her throat, but Ronald yanked it back with a hand twisted in the hood of its ratty cloak. He knocked it to its knees with a well-placed kick, and while he bound its hands behind its back, Arya stuffed a torn piece of its own furs into its mouth to keep it quiet. Her head shot up at the sound of Gendry’s shout, only to catch his Wight collapsing to the ground, face completely caved in from his hammer.

They were unharmed but for one of the younger rangers, who was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and limping, but he insisted he was fine. “We need to get out of here,” he said instead. “Too much noise was made, others will be on the alert.”

The body of the last Wight was thrown over the rump of Ronald’s horse and secured. Nymeria snapped at it when it lunged forward in an unexpected attempt to headbutt Arya, its eyes glowing with rage, but the moment passed and they turned back for the Wall, moving much faster than they had before. Arya didn’t doubt that the ranger was right; others would be nearby, and with them, likely a White Walker, if Jon and the other members of the Watch were to be believed. They had no time to waste, especially now, because she was fully aware that the stunt they just pulled might have accelerated the Night King’s decision to strike.

**

“Its _face_?” Edd said in disbelief.

“You’ve heard of the Faceless Men?” Arya said, staring at the Wight in front of them. “The most powerful group of assassins in the world, and not one of them is actually known. This is the way they do it.”

“But…_how_?”

“There are many types of magic, Lord Commander,” Arya answered carefully, leading the small group of people away from the cell and the Wight’s furious shrieking. “There’s the kind that brought Jon and my mother back to life; there are darker kinds, illusions, that the warlocks of Qarth use to inspire fear in their city; there are kinds that can make a person appear to be someone else. And you don’t have to know how to use magic in order to do the last.”

She opened her leather pack, the one she carried everywhere, and pulled out a face.

She wasn’t afraid the way she had been with Gendry all those moons ago in the Riverlands, but the way Jon’s jaw clenched hurt a little bit. He knew everything, had gotten every last detail out that she was willing to give. Seeing it though, she understood why he was uncomfortable.

“I stole a few from the Hall of Faces when I escaped them,” Arya explained, letting Edd take it gingerly. “I posed as a Braavosi servant girl to assassinate Walder Frey.” Edd handed it back, eyebrows raised, and she put the face over her own without fanfare.

Everyone but Gendry flinched at the change. She knew without looking that her hands were no longer her own, that her skin was darker, hair longer. She would be Sansa’s height now, if she were here. When she spoke, her voice would be a little lower and throatier.

“I’m not just pretending to be someone I’m not, I’m _becoming_ them,” Arya said, allowing the full effect to wash over the men. Gendry was the only one who didn’t take a hesitant step back, and Jon was taut as a bowstring, he was so tense. “Whoever this girl was before the Faceless Men took her is still here, in my head. Her mannerisms, memories, it’s all here, and I don’t even have to reach for them. That’s the thing about the Faceless Men; after enough time, they don’t even know who they used to be. They are merely chameleons with a mission, and that mission only. It’s why I didn’t fit,” she went on. “I couldn’t give up my own personal vendetta, and I couldn’t forget where I came from or who I was. I failed them.”

Gendry put a hand at the small of her back as she removed the face. The tension in the room dissipated instantly, though Jon was still gazing at her with narrowed eyes. “Is this what you plan to do with the Wight?” he said in a low voice. “Take its face?”

“If I can.”

“And if it works?”

Arya looked him in the eyes, and knew that Jon already knew the answer.

**

“He won’t let you do it alone,” Gendry told her, the two of them crammed naked on the narrow bunk in her small room. “You know that.”

“Of course not,” Arya answered, “but we still don’t know if I can take a Wight’s face.” They had chosen to wait until the following day after breakfast, after Edd took one look at Jon and promptly announced dinner. “If I can, then we will find one for you and for Jon.”

Gendry hummed a low voice in his throat. “Are the three of us enough?”

“It’ll have to be,” Arya mused. “If too many Wights are seen acting out of the norm, there’s no way we’ll survive.” The difficult part would be capturing more Wights, and ones that were mostly undecayed at that. Finding the one that they had was lucky, she knew. But night had fallen now, and she didn’t want to think about the monsters right now. Not when there was something more important.

“You haven’t asked me to marry you,” she said quietly, tracing the lines on his palm with a finger. He stiffened, but she continued anyway. “I know Sansa showed you the dress. You haven’t said anything.” There was no doubt in her mind that Gendry loved her and wanted to be with her, and at this point, they were so intertwined that a marriage would be a mere formality.

A formality for her; for him, she knew, it meant something much bigger.

Gendry let out a long breath, meeting her gaze when she tilted her head up to look at him. “I haven’t asked because I don’t have a name to give you,” he said carefully. “I may be the bastard of the former king, but that means nothing. Daenerys has not made any sort of offer to legitimize me, and even if she did, I don’t know that I would want to be.”

“Why not?” Arya asked.

“It would mean leaving you,” Gendry answered softly. “And I am not willing to leave you.”

Arya looked him in the eye. “I have already told the queen that nothing and no one will take you from me.” She twined their fingers together and propped herself on an elbow so she could rest their hands on his chest. “If she legitimizes you, that doesn’t change.”

“If she legitimizes me, I will have no choice but to serve as Lord of the Stormlands,” Gendry pointed out. “You would stay North, and I would have to go.”

“There is always a choice,” Arya said firmly. “For both of us, and more than one.” She pressed her lips to his cheek and then met his eyes again, making sure he was with her. “You do not have to be the one to give me a name.”

His brow creased in confusion until she went on: “_I_ could give _you_ a name.”

It was the first time she had said this to Gendry, and logically she knew that most men would dismiss the words without giving them any sort of thought at all. Gendry was different, but he was still a man. She was prepared for him to say no.

Not for the first time, she thought privately that she shouldn’t underestimate him, because his brow furrowed curiously and all he said was, “Is that possible?”

Arya shrugged. “The North made Jon a king,” she said, “and my sister has retaken the name Stark despite being married twice, and one of those consummated.” She felt a brief flash of anger, remembering Sansa talk blankly about Ramsey and the horror he inflicted upon her, but she had a goal in mind now and didn’t dwell. “It is rare, but men have been known to take on the name of a lady in the North before. Lyanna Mormont’s mother, Maege, married a man of a smaller house than even her own, and he was the youngest of his father’s sons. And if Lady Lyanna marries, do you see her taking her husband’s name?” Gendry snorted a laugh and she grinned back before sobering enough to go on. “Our situation is rather different, but I don’t think that anyone would begrudge you for taking the name Stark. Least of all the Starks themselves,” she added, smirking, “considering I resisted marriage so hard as a child.”

She said the last part lightly, but Gendry frowned again. “What’s changed?” At her raised eyebrow, he continued, “Why are you considering marriage now?”

Arya pushed her thumb down against the furrow of his brow, trying to smooth out the frown line. “Because I know you want to marry,” she murmured, moving her hands to cup his face, “and I would give you anything I had the power to give you.” He inhaled sharply underneath her, but she wasn’t finished, and she needed him to understand, to believe her. “I love you,” she said firmly. “I love you so much that it should frighten me, but it never has. It has never frightened me, the way I feel for you, and the things I would do for you…perhaps it _should_ scare me, how many parts of me have changed since I’ve met you, since we were children. And if it weren’t for you, I would probably have gone my whole life without knowing how this feels.” She took a deep breath, faltering under the heaviness of his blue eyes for a moment. “What I mean is that, no, we don’t have to marry. But you want to, and I want you to have everything you want.”

Gendry’s fingers tapped an irregular pattern against her spine underneath the furs. He gazed up at her warmly, whispered, “But what do _you _want, Arya?”

She smiled back, bending down to rub the tip of her nose down his. “I want you,” she answered, “whatever that means or looks like.” She kissed him softly, letting out a breath when his hands skimmed across her skin. “Name or no name,” she sighed, “Winterfell or Storm’s End—” his fingers tightened on her hips as he reared up, encouraging her to wrap her legs ‘round his waist, “—married or just _us_.” The last word hissed out between her teeth as Gendry’s length slid against her core, where she was already damp from earlier in the night and his release inside her. In a quick move that evidently surprised him, judging by how wide his eyes got, she tightened the muscles of her stomach and rolled her hips to guide him inside her.

“Fuck, Arya,” Gendry whispered. “I want you too.”

He didn’t ask her to marry him that night, but they were on the same page anyways.


End file.
